Reply #35: why don't folks do a little legal research on torture indictments and trials?

[amborin]

there's a huge scholarly lit on this

and the main conclusions seem to be that war crimes trials---and torture kind of fits under this rubric---don't act as deterrents....

pol pot was not deterred by the Nuremberg trials, e.g.....

and they don't really serve as retribution, since nothing is enough to compensate....

and they don't lead to reestablishing the rule of law or appropriate legal norms.....

so....



the bottom line is: people need to study up more before issuing the condemnations